Deus Ex Machina: any active agent who appears unexpectedly to solve an insoluble difficulty

These are the owners, those faceless entities that toil away on long hours, plotting the slow and painful demise of the actors in their bitter plays of tragedy. They drip with the blood of a thousand years, and only sand runs in their varicose veins. They hold the pens of fate in their gnarled hands, and they judge. They weigh each soul on a scale of brass, meating out emotionless sentences on the tiny figures in their displays of power. Some people say their collective humanity has washed away in the evening tide, while others denie they exist. They have never been seen, and they only abjucate from behind the veils of a thousand skins. When they need to, you can feel their force...